Audience

For beginners

No prior knowledge assumed.

1. 26 min

   Oct 2026 Official source

   Do sitemaps still matter?

   Google Search Central

   Asks whether XML sitemaps are still needed now crawlers and AI bots are more capable, and discusses the Couldn't fetch warning in Search Console.

2. 31 min

   Jul 2026 Official source

   How to read the Indexing Report

   Google Search Central

   Covers how to read the Page Indexing report in Search Console, and why pages listed as not indexed are not always a fault to fix.

3. 6 min

   Feb 2024 Official source

   How Google Search crawls pages

   Google Search Central

   Explains the steps of how Google Search crawls pages, from URL discovery to fetching and rendering.

   Older: check current guidance
4. 3 min

   Oct 2020 Teaching or conference talk

   Challenges in Web Crawling

   Venkatesh Vinayakarao

   Gives a brief summary of web crawling challenges such as politeness, freshness, coverage, scale and avoiding traps.

   Older: check current guidance
5. 5 min

   Jun 2020 Teaching or conference talk

   How Google's PageRank Algorithm Works

   Spanning Tree

   Explains the random surfer model behind PageRank and what it means for a page to be important.

   Older: check current guidance
6. 17 min

   Jan 2019 Trade press or conference

   Won't somebody think of the robots? Mark Williams-Cook

   SearchNorwichXL

   Covers SEO work that is invisible to users, in a talk written for business owners and digital marketers.

   Older: check current guidance
7. 13 min

   Jun 2012 Independent practitioner

   What is JSON-LD?

   Manu Sporny

   Introduces JSON-LD and how to express basic linked data in JSON, for developers, designers and hobbyists.

   Older: check current guidance